Bertha Braunthal
| Bertha Braunthal Bertha Braunthal-Clark |
|
|---|---|
| Born | 1 February 1887 Vienna, Austria-Hungary |
| Died | Q2 1968 Islington, London, England |
| Occupation | activist, journalist and politician |
| Political party |
SPÖ USPD KPD Communist Party of Great Britain |
| Spouse(s) | Willie Norby Clark |
| Parent(s) | Maier Braunthal (1836-1914) Klara Zoller/Braunthal (1862-1940) |
Bertha Braunthal (1 February 1887 - 1968) was a communist politician in Germany from the party's creation in 1920 till her emigration to London in 1933. She was also a first-wave feminist.
Sources sometimes identify her as Bertha Braunthal-Clark, reflecting her marriage in or before 1933 to the Scottish born communist Willie Norby Clark.
Braunthal was the eldest of six children born into a Jewish family in Vienna. Her father, Maier Braunthal (1836-1914), originally from Odessa, worked as an accountant. Two of her younger brothers, Julius Braunthal (1891-1972) and Alfred Braunthal (1897-1980) would also grow up to become notable as pioneers of twentieth century socialism.
During the First World War she moved to the Netherlands and obtained a clerical job with a manufacturing company. (The Netherlands managed to avoid direct involvement in the First World War.) After that, instead of moving back to what remained of Austria, she took a job in Berlin. Before the war, in Austria, she had been a member of the Social Democratic Party. In 1917 its German equivalent split, primarily over the question of whether or not to continue supporting the government in its determination to continue with the war. Braunthal became a member of the breakaway Independent Social Democratic Party ("Unabhängige Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands" / USPD). After the war ended, at the Party Conference which took place at Leipzig in December 1919, she was one of six people elected to the secretariat of the USPD Central Committee. During the later war years she may also have been involved with the Spartacus League. She played a part in the revolutionary turbulence that followed the war, working in Berlin as secretary to the propaganda department of the .
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